Last weekend, hundreds of doctors demonstrated on the streets of London against a system of job allocation which will leave 8,000 of them without a job and takes no proper account of their experience. For the past year, ordinary people have been demonstrating week in and week out in towns all over the country, over cuts in staff, closures of departments and sometimes whole hospitals.

Yet what has the Patricia Hewitt to tell us about the NHS? We are not closing hospitals, waiting lists are down and beds are only being cut because of improved techniques! She dares to boast that cancer patients are seen within 2 months of diagnosis! Shouldn't that be two weeks?

And now the latest means of dealing with the deficit in finance - due to pouring the "investment" into private pockets via PFI etc., is to ... pour more profits into these same pockets!

Yes, we are told that Boots and Tesco will be invited to "tender" to open GP surgeries in their stores. The government is advertising for "experienced healthcare providers" to apply for £30m worth of contracts which would place them in a supermarket. And who are these "providers"? "Entrepreneurial GPs, social enterprises and companies in the FTSE 100"!

Will this add to the provision of healthcare so that there is more availability? Not at all, it will just substitute private providers - who are in it for the profit - for direct provision by the NHS. It is a cynical way of using the gap in provision of GP services in deprived areas, as a "way in" for private sector providers. And how long before patient charges are allowed in, too?